There is peace here

7 October

I’m writing to you again now that I’ve walked around this village for a couple of days. What I find beautiful is everywhere here. That’s to say, there is peace here.

Here’s a little scratch from the peat fields.
There are often curious oppositions of Black and White here. For example, a canal with white sandy banks through a sooty black plain. You can see it above, too, small black figures against a white sky, and again gradations of black and white in the sand in the foreground.

I saw an effect exactly like Ruisdaels Bleaching fields at Overveen: foreground a high road shadowed by clouds, then a low, bare meadow on which the light fell, with two houses in the distance (one with a slate-grey, one with a red roof). Behind them a canal and stacks of peat, changing in size depending on the plane in which they stood — far away a small silhouette of a little row of huts and a small church tower. Small black figures laying the washing out to bleach, a single mast of a barge standing up between the peat stacks. Above, a grey sky with a lot of movement in it.

To read the letter in full click here.

Tagged as: black, figures, peat, Ruisdael, sky, white